“Do not worry, Madam Vice President,” President Kwon said, reading Whiting’s thoughts. “As you can see, none of my soldiers down there are armed with anything more than batons. We have no intention of hurting any of your people. They are only trying to do their jobs.” A few scuffles broke out, but the Americans were quickly hustled out and replaced by Korean technicians. In a matter of minutes, the only Americans left were in the observation area.
A few moments later the Klaxon sounded again. This time they heard: “Jack Rabbit, Jack Rabbit, Jack Rabbit, this is Guardian on Guard. All aircraft evacuate P-518 immediately.” The controller then read off a date-time group and a coded authenticator.
“‘Jack Rabbit’ is the warning that a border violation has just occurred,” General Park explained. “‘Guardian’ is the call sign of the American Airborne Warning and Control System radar plane that monitors all air activity across the Korean peninsula. P-518 is the Tactical Zone, the area south of the DMZ where unidentified aircraft will be shot down without warning. The general officer aboard that aircraft is the fourth in command, behind the joint forces commander, the Korean tactical control director, and the American battle director. Since no warning of a border penetration was ever sent from this headquarters, it became Guardian’s responsibility to issue the warning. Obviously, we cannot do anything to stop those onboard your radar plane. The cat, as you Americans say, is out of the bag.”
Vice President Whiting watched in fascination. The computer screens now showed several tracks northbound across the DMZ, from the Yellow Sea all the way across the peninsula to the Sea of Japan. It was a coordinated launch of several dozen units, timed to perfection — they crossed either the DMZ or the coastline inbound to their targets at almost exactly the same instant. At the same time, several more tracks began moving northward from other South Korean bases.
“Mr. President, General Park, you must call a halt to this right away,” Admiral Allen said. “Sir, you cannot hope to stage this attack without a forceful and possibly disastrous retaliation from North Korea, China, or both. You cannot hope to cripple North Korea’s armed forces enough to prevent a counterattack. At last analysis, the North has stationed half a million troops within sixty miles of the DMZ. Your Air Force can’t possibly hope to stop them all.”
“Admiral, it is not our intention to completely destroy the Communists’ military forces,” President Kwon said. “As you so correctly point out, that would be a costly and dangerous operation. General, please explain to the Vice President and the admiral.”
General Park bowed to President Kwon, then turned to Whiting and Allen. “President Kwon rightfully stated that our intention should not be to reunite the peninsula and the Korean people by force, but to create the proper atmosphere, the proper conditions, for a revolution to take place in the North. The reason there has not been a people’s revolt against the oppressive, brutal Communist dictatorship is that members of the military who belong to the party are rewarded with the basics of life — food, clothing, shelter, and security — for brutalizing and repressing their own people.
“The organizations responsible for this brutality and repression are the forty Spetznaz units, comprised of special operations battalions and Naval Infiltration Squadrons. These units were designed to operate inside South Korea, but the internal security and counterintelligence organs within the Korean Communist Party use them for internal security, counterespionage, and intelligence-gathering inside North Korea itself. They are brutal and bloodthirsty mongrels whose task it is to seek out and destroy the enemy using whatever means possible. They have created an atmosphere of fear inside North Korea that has stifled free thought and free expression for almost three generations.”
General Park motioned to the large computer screens in the observation room, which were repeaters of the much larger presentation screens on the command center stage. “The active, reserve, and paramilitary forces of the Korean People’s Army total about seven million, or about one-third of the entire population,” he went on. “The army pervades every aspect of life inside North Korea. But of that massive number, only about one hundred thousand are party members or members of one of these elite terrorist units. Through our intelligence and infiltration methods, we have identified the top ten units and their locations — two naval infiltration groups, two special forces paratroop air wings, four Spetznaz battalions, and one terrorist infiltration training and operations battalion.
“In addition, we have targeted the headquarters and barracks of the Eighth and Ninth Special Corps. The Eighth Special Corps is President Kim Jong-il’s personal protection unit, and the Ninth Special Corps is the unit designated to hold and defend the streets of Pyongyang against rioters, insurrection, and invasion. As I said, a total of one hundred thousand troops. They are in twelve general target areas — two naval bases, two air bases, five army bases, and within the capital of North Korea itself. We have no illusion that we can kill all of them, of course, but we think this will create the spark that can bring down one of the planet’s last Communist dictatorships.”
“What about the other six million nine hundred thousand fighters?” Vice President Whiting asked incredulously. “You dismiss them because they’re not Communist Party members, but they’re still trained to fight and they’re indoctrinated in Communist ideology almost from birth. Are you just going to ignore them? What about North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction — their biological, chemical, and nuclear warheads? How can you plan such a limited attack as this and simply ignore the size and power of the forces that you haven’t decided to attack?”
“Because I trust my intelligence officers and the defectors who reported their findings and observations to me,” President Kwon said. “These patriots all told me the same thing, and it has been checked and crosschecked and triple-checked over many months: the North is desperate and is willing to do anything, even trigger World War Three in a nuclear holocaust, to break the cycle of poverty, starvation, and despair.
“From our sources, we estimated that ninety-five percent of the nation was suffering the effects of the corrupt, paranoid, power-mad regime. Ninety percent of the nation had not been paid in over three months, and seventy percent hadn’t been paid in over a year. Sixty percent of the nation had no electricity, running water, fuel oil, or sanitary facilities for three or more days a week, every week of the year. Unemployment was at fifty percent. And forty percent of the population, forty percent, ate less than one thousand calories of food a day. Infant mortality is twenty percent in the countryside, ten percent in the cities.
“We knew war could not be far behind. War could do many things for the Communist government. It would give the people someone to hate other than their own government. It could give them a reason to fight, a reason to live, or at least a reason to leave the squalor. It could force the West to send aid, even if they were defeated. At the very least, it promised a quick end to their suffering. A bullet between the eyes, a bomb dropped from far above, a cruise missile launched from hundreds of miles away — even the millisecond flash of a nuclear explosion and the briefest sensation of the heat of the fireball. All would be preferable, less painful, than staying at home watching your children die of cold and starvation.
“And if the North struck first, Madam Vice President, our findings told us that we would suffer the loss of Seoul and more than five million people. And there would still exist the possibility of a thermonuclear exchange that could end our nation and even our race. But if we struck first, and struck quickly, we might have a chance of cutting off the serpent’s head before its coils could reach out to us. With the internal security and enforcement apparatus of the party destroyed, perhaps the people could rise up and throw off their Communist slave masters once and for all.”